


332. curse

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [207]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Changelings, Gen, like..........kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 10:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9435917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “You’re real,” Helena says. The voice coming out of her mouth is so strange, like a music box’s last croaking notes before you wind it up again. “I can feel it. You’re real, and I’m not.”“Yeah,” Sarah says, unnerved. “Exactly.”“How do I get it,” Helena says. “How do I be real too.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of "realness" is inspired by [this retelling of the Velveteen Rabbit](http://archive.is/1q1G7), which will haunt me until my dying day.
> 
> ...in a good way.

Sarah’s parents wanted her to have a sister, and so she has one now. Sarah isn’t supposed to ask questions. Her mum went out one day and came back pale, and shaking, and had a whispered conversation with her dad in the kitchen that Sarah wasn’t supposed to be able to hear. Sarah sat on the stairs and picked at the skin near her thumb, where it was flaking away. She listened anyways.

She’s never been enough for them. The house echoes – no matter how loud she yells, it never fills all those echoes up. Their table is a square; there are four seats. One is always empty. Sarah’s mother keeps a hand on her belly, all the time, like she still thinks something else is going to come out.

Or. She did.

There’s a dark, stormy day in fall when Sarah’s mother takes her hand and leads her to the bathroom. She cuts all of Sarah’s hair off and gathers it in a bag. She tries to make Sarah hold still so she can prick Sarah’s finger with a needle; Sarah bites her, hard, runs upstairs and hide under the bed. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what’s happening but she knows she doesn’t like it – it feels the way the stormclouds feel, heavy and dark and wrong.

Her parents hold her down. She kicks out with her boots and tries to bite and tries to punch with her fists but they get three drops of blood from her anyways: one-two-three. Then they let her go. She bleeds all the way up the stairs, the horrible stairs that creak and echo and groan. She hides under the bed again. She doesn’t understand.

Three days later, her mother comes through the door with another little girl.

She looks like Sarah.

Only she doesn’t. Only she doesn’t at all.

* * *

They tell Sarah that this is her sister – her name is Helena, and she’s a part of the family. Sarah doesn’t believe them. _She_ can tell that this thing isn’t real, and she’s a kid; they’re the adults, they should know. But they don’t. They brush Helena’s hair, and sing her songs, and Helena looks at Sarah with eyes that are wide and empty. She follows Sarah _everywhere_. The stairs creak twice as loud when Helena walks on them – so the house agrees with Sarah, that she doesn’t belong here.

“Leave me alone,” Sarah spits, when Helena’s trailing after her through the upstairs hallway. “I know you’re not real. I know you’re not my sister. You’re not gonna make me think you are, so piss _off_.”

“You’re real,” Helena says. The voice coming out of her mouth is so strange, like a music box’s last croaking notes before you wind it up again. “I can feel it. You’re real, and I’m not.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, unnerved. “Exactly.”

“How do I get it,” Helena says. “How do I be real too.”

“You don’t,” Sarah says; she pulls her shoulders up towards her ears, shoves her hands in her pockets, heads towards her room. Only it’s Helena’s room too, now, so she follows.

(Of course she follows.)

* * *

Sarah won’t come to dinner anymore, because the sight of Helena sitting across from her and staring at her is too much for her to stand. So Sarah is getting thinner, more exhausted. Helena keeps eating. There’s pink in her cheeks, now. There wasn’t before.

She still doesn’t look real. That’s Sarah’s only consolation: Helena looks like she is stitched together out of paper and string, and it would only take one solid pull to make her unravel. She looks healthy. She doesn’t look real.

That doesn’t mean Sarah can sleep easy, though, when Helena is in the room. She doesn’t know if Helena sleeps. When Sarah falls asleep Helena is awake. When Sarah wakes up, Helena is already watching her.

But she manages – she must, because she wakes up in the middle of the night to Helena sitting in her bed. Sarah says a word that she doesn’t think she’s supposed to know, scrambles to sitting, fumbles for her lamp and yanks the chain and there’s Helena, glowing in the light. She looks like you should be able to see right through her. Only you can’t. She is very, very _there_.

“I figured it out,” Helena says. “I solved it. Why I am not real.”

“Get out of my bed,” Sarah says shakily. “Get out.”

“They used your blood,” Helena says, and Sarah stops talking. Helena sucks in all the light, somehow – Sarah doesn’t know how, but she does. When Helena leans in closer she doesn’t smell like anything at all.

“To make me,” she whispers. “They used your blood. But they took it from you, Sarah. Sister. They ripped it out. These things have to be done by choice.”

“So,” she says, tilting her head to the side. “That’s all I need. Three drops of blood. If you give them to me, I can be real like you.”

“No,” Sarah says. The syllable trembles and she hates herself for it. But: she’s terrified.

(Underneath that terror is relief. Sarah is the one keeping Helena from being real. Helena can’t do anything unless Sarah lets her. And Sarah is never going to let her. Never, never, never.)

“This house is big,” Helena says. “Aren’t you lonely? I can be a very good sister. You could hurt me if you want. Or I could sleep in your bed.” She tilts her head to the side. “I don’t know how it works. Not really. But whatever sister you want me to be, I could be her.”

“I want you to _go away_ ,” Sarah says. She clenches her fists in the blankets. “I want you to have never _existed_ , alright?! That’s it. That’s all I want from you.”

“If you give me the blood,” Helena says, “I can leave.” Her face is a perfect porcelain blank. Sarah has no idea if she’s lying. “I can walk away, and you can be alone.”

Sarah swallows. “No.”

This is the moment where Helena should get angry. She does not get angry. Instead she looks to the side and tilts her head, just a little bit. “You will give it to me,” she says, “someday.” Her eyes flick back to Sarah, quick and sharp. “I’ve seen it.”

“No I won’t,” Sarah says. “You know what I see? I see that someday they’re gonna figure it out, that you’re never gonna be human. And then they’ll _hate_ you, Helena, and you know what? They’ll be right. They should hate you. _I_ hate you.”

Helena just smiles at her, terrible and eerie. It’s impossible, in this moment, that anyone could think she was human. “Maybe,” she says. “But someday you will give it to me. The thing that I want. And then we will see, Sarah. And then we will see.”

With that she slithers out of Sarah’s bed, lies down in her own bed – on her side, her blank face tilted towards Sarah’s. She just keeps on not blinking. Sarah lies back down in her own bed, turns her back to Helena and watches the wall. It doesn’t matter. She can feel Helena’s eyes in the back of her head, like they’re burning a hole in her skull. The worst part of it is this: even with Helena looking at her like that, Sarah knows it’s inevitable that she’s going to fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
